Ep #143: Hustle Culture Sucks, So Let’s Stop

You are listening to episode 143 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where we kick hustle culture in the ass. Let’s go.

Welcome to The Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience, and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Amy Latta. Let’s dive in.

Hello my coaches, how are you? I’m doing fabulous. So it is the first week of August. And tomorrow, tomorrow, I’m so excited. We have coaches flying into St. Louis from all around the world, except for one who’s staying home in Australia. Coaches from all around the world descending upon St. Louis tomorrow and we are kicking off the Path To 100K, the first official round of this new mastermind that I have created.

I’m so excited. We meet tomorrow, welcome reception, and then three days of live coaching, learning, creating. My photographer is coming in to do some photos for everybody. We are doing some workshopping. Everybody’s going to leave with knowing what’s working in their business, what they’re going to replicate. They’re going to know what’s not working, what they’re going to let go.

And they’re going to know what things they’re going to go and do new in their business that they haven’t done before. And they’re going to replicate all of that to 100K. I’m so excited. I’m so excited for them and I’m so excited to share their stories with you over these next few months so that you can get ready to be in the next round, right?

One of the things that we are going to be talking about this week is hustle culture. Our conversation in the mastermind live event is not going to be titled hustle culture, but we’re going to be talking about it in a roundabout way. And as I was putting the notes together for how I’m going to talk about it with them I was like, this needs to be talked about in general.

The energy with which you show up in your business, so one of the things that we do in Path To 100K, like Path To 100K is a simple three step process. What’s working? What lights you on fire? What do you fabulous at? What are you amazing at? And let’s do more of that. Let’s replicate that.

What’s not working? What doesn’t work for you? What crushes your soul? What do you absolutely loathe? Do you have to do it? Can you outsource that? If you have to do it and you can’t yet outsource it, how can we help you think more neutrally about it? And then keep trying 100 new things until you’re just making those what’s working and what’s not working longer.

And one of the things that we think we have to do that might be in your what’s not working is the energy with which you show up in your business. How you actually function as a businessperson. Because in the entrepreneurial space, I don’t know if you guys have noticed, there’s a little something that we hear a lot about, hustle culture. Every day I’m hustling.

And we’re going to have a conversation about hustle because we need to just say no to the hustle. I’m saying it right here. Listen, it became the mantra of like the aughts and the teens. And now we have, here’s what’s happened 10 to 20 years into like the hustle vibe and the hustle culture, you want to know what we have? You want to know what we have to show for it? We’ve got a handful of massively successful people and a whole hell of a lot of freaking burnt out people. That’s what we have.

And I want to offer to you one of the biggest reasons, one of the kickbacks I get from people who don’t like me talking about making 100K, who don’t want the focus of the mastermind to be about making 100K is because through 20 years of hustle culture, and it probably goes back longer, this is just my awareness of it.

In 20 years of hustle culture they’ve attached that to, okay, the only way I’m going to make 100K is if I hustle, is if I overwork, is if I sacrifice family, and my life, and sleep. You mean I kind of have to like hate my life and I have to grind it out every single day.

I mean, I can feel the negative reaction in my body as I’m even saying those words. But we’ve attached success and making money as an entrepreneur to ignoring our families. To not having fun in our life. That we get to have fun once we get there, then we get to enjoy it, right?

So number one, number one, there’s going to be like 27 points to this episode. I’m not even entirely sure. Number one, why are we doing any of this if we’re not loving it now? Why are we doing any of it if we’re not loving it now? If you can’t find a way to love what you are doing now, I want you to question why you’re doing it.

And a big underbelly of hustle culture is it doesn’t matter if you love it now or not, if that’s the train that’s going to get you to your 100K, or to your million dollars, or to whatever the long lasting goal is, suck it up and let’s get you there. Then you get to enjoy your life. And I’m kind of like, really? Haven’t we learned better?

Why don’t we want to love it more now? Why not? What if that is available to you? What if you can make 100K or beyond and love your life and love the process of it now? Now, I’m going to come back multiple times to that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing things that we don’t always enjoy. That doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes feel pukey. That doesn’t mean we aren’t experiencing new things we’ve previously been terrified of. But we can find the joy in the entertainment and the enjoyment in that.

We have fun and all that we do, it’s a sign in my office. If we’re not having fun we’re not doing it. If we’re not enjoying the process we’re not doing it. So miss me with that hustle culture of like, I’ll sleep when I’m dead. No, I’m going to sleep right now, thank you. Miss me with that like I’m going to sleep when I’m dead. No.

It’s like right out of the gate one of the biggest reasons people say they don’t want to make 100K is because they think they have to sacrifice everything. And I want to be really clear, the overriding theme, maybe this is like point zero. I think the overriding theme is that it’s important to understand that hustle is an energy. It’s not a set of actions. Okay? Hustle is an energy, it is not a set of actions.

Hustle isn’t what you do, it’s how you feel and the energy with which you are doing those things. Because I can tell you right now, you can work a ton of hours and be taking a lot of action, and not seeing any results in your business. And the flip side of that is true. You can work only a few hours, you can have luxurious amounts of space and creativity and like brain expansion and movement and you can create a ton of results.

I would even offer to you that that creates way more success than work, work, work, tons, tons, tons, go, go, go, go. For some people. We’re going to get to that in just a moment how there is, for people who are like true hustlers, who like live and breathe this and you’re listening to this right now and you’re like, “Screw you, Amy.” I’m speaking to you here too. I’m going to come back around to the people who hustling might actually be their jam.

And I think it’s really important, I’ve already mentioned that the hustle is in our culture. You know, Rick Ross has a song, Every Day I’m Hustling. That’s the autobiography of Vivica A. Fox. Hustle and Flow with Terrence Howard, one of my absolute favorite movies that I’ve ever seen. I think Adam Sandler has a brand new sports movie out this year called Hustle.

It’s the mantra of so many memes and themes. Hustle is to be admired. We’ve been told it’s required to succeed and win. We have been conditioned, we have been socialized to believe that hustle is what creates entrepreneurial success. Pound the pavement, hustle, keep going, push harder. If you aren’t succeeding, you’re not working hard enough.

You know, hustle culture is long hours, make bigger sacrifices than those around you. I think there’s another vibe to hustle, what point am I on? Point two, point three? I’m not sure yet. I think that’s another vibe to this, that hustle culture kind of has an air of like we got something they don’t and that’s why we’re going to succeed. Fuck that man. Screw that, no.

Every single person, no matter how you’re wired, no matter how you are designed, you don’t have to elevate yourself or lower other people in order for you to get there. You are not a better person if you work 12 hour days, five to seven days a week than somebody who’s working five hours a day for three days a week. You are not better. And here’s the thing, the other person isn’t better. One is not better than another.

So hustle culture really wants to tell us that it’s got to look a certain way. That is patriarchy every single day of the week, that success is defined by one way and it’s got to look this way. And if it looks any other way, it’s not going to work. Hi, that’s like patriarchy 101. Success is only reserved for those who hustle, who work extra hard, who sacrifice, make big sacrifices that other people aren’t willing to.

That’s a common theme among hustle memes, right? I’m willing to sacrifice what other people aren’t, and that’s why I’m going to get the golden ticket. I’m like, I don’t know, I’m pretty sure there’s enough golden tickets for everybody. You don’t have to sacrifice your family, your family time. You actually can do a lot of different things and have a life that you love and still create what you want.

I’ve also seen like it’s better to hustle 24/7 than to work the nine to five grind. Really, is it? Maybe it’s not for some people. Now most people in here, if you’re listening to this podcast you are wanting to build a coaching business. But we are no more elevated in this world than somebody that’s like, that whole entrepreneurial thing, not me. I love going to work, doing my job, and going home. It doesn’t mean that anyone is better than others. So there’s a real better than others in the hustle culture.

I think the next point I want to make is that we’ve really confused hard work with hustle. And we’ve confused hard work with the number of hours and the speed at which we work. Listen, friends, hustle is defined as to force someone to move hurriedly or unceremoniously in a specified direction. To obtain by forceful action or persuasion. Busy movement and activity.

I don’t know, I’m pretty sure I can accomplish a lot of things without having to force, push, or persuade, or just do a lot of busy work. In fact I want to offer to you that the opposite can just as easily be true. That the more space I give myself, when I slow down, when I slow down my thinking. Again, hustle is energy. It’s thinking, it’s feelings, it’s not necessarily actions.

When I slow my energy down and I really think about what’s most important, I actually can become much more accomplished and create much more. Part of hustle culture depends on our worth is seen in our productivity. That if we’re not producing, then we don’t have good value.

What I want to offer to you is that slowing down doesn’t outwardly look like production, but that’s because we’re giving our brain all of the space to come up with the best ideas and the best way that we personally, which might look very differently than the person standing next to me. But how we personally, how you personally are going to create the business that you’re going to create.

This is why in Path to 100K I did not create a blanket process that everyone needs to follow. Because that does not allow for each person’s individual what’s working, what’s not working. I can force hustle on all of you. And I’ve run masterminds in the past like that. I’m like, okay, this is the one way, this is the one train I know for sure. Guess what? It don’t work. It might work for some, but it is definitely not going to work for everybody.

And I do want to be clear that we will need to work. You will need to do things you don’t always want to do. That creating success does require of you creating the life coaching business that allows you to pay for the life that you want to live. It does require you to try things that aren’t going to work and to fail and to fall down. And you only get better the more things that you test out and try.

So if you’re only making offers every once in a while, it will take longer to get better at making offers, right? If you want to become a much better coach over the course of time, the more people that you’re coaching regularly, the faster that you’ll get there. You do need to allow yourself to get better and to fail and to fall and to evaluate and to figure out what you’re going to do next. But you don’t have to do that and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. But you do need to be able to go.

I think about this, I watch my son playing piano and he is a natural talent. We actually have a piano competition this weekend. And he doesn’t need quite as many reps as, say I would, in the same position to achieve the same amount of success, right? He has a natural gift. He is going to pick things up sooner than say I would, but we both need to put in reps.

I’m going to need to put more reps in than him to get to the same place, but we’re both going to need to put reps in. Like he can’t just read a piece of music and play it one time and get an award, right? He still has to show up, he still needs to practice, he still needs to do things that he maybe doesn’t always want to do. But he also has a passion for it and he loves it. There’s an ultimate goal that he wants, right?

So this is what I’m talking about when we’re talking about what’s working, what do you love, and what’s not working and what don’t you love? And your willingness to do some things that you don’t always love and being able to distinguish is it just because it creates an uncomfortable feeling, and it’s actually the feeling that you don’t love? Well, guess what? That’s what the entire point of the mastermind is all about, is to coach you through that.

I used to say that I would rather stick a fork in my eye than ask somebody to pay me money to work with them. I would rather stick a fork in my eye than do sales, this was my mantra. But it had to do with my fear of rejection and my people pleasing and the discomfort that I felt talking about money with other people. It didn’t actually have anything to do with sales specifically.

So that’s what I mean about figuring out what you actually have to do, and how much of that is work you can get better at versus work you don’t actually need to do and you can outsource to someone. And a lot of times when people hear me speak out against hustle, they think I mean lay on the couch all day and expect results to just show up. And we all know that’s not how it works.

We use a coaching model around here, where there’s the facts of your life and then there’s your thoughts, your feelings, your actions, and then your results. If you just do actions with results, your energy is probably out of whack. But if you just do thoughts and feelings, just the energy but you don’t follow up with actions, you don’t follow up with doing, then you’re never actually going to create the results. They don’t magically appear. You need all of it.

And hustle culture is really more of an energy. It’s a forceful, anxious, we got to get it now or we’re going to fall behind. And we can’t let people win before we win. That’s that hustle the energy, and if that’s fueling your actions, it’s very hard to sustain. So your actions can actually look very similar, it’s how you feel inside that really determines if you’re in that hustle versus open and expansive.

And I think it’s really important to note another reason why I’m like so adamant about speaking out against hustle culture is that if hustle equals success, and it equals not stopping and tons of hours, listen, single moms working three jobs would all be making millions. Don’t tell me that success comes from working lots of hours and being very productive.

And I was actually just coaching somebody in Free To Paid Coach recently, you know, she’s a single mom working full-time and starting her coaching business. And I’m like, we’re giant assholes if we don’t honor that I, with a spouse in the house, not working a full-time job, and with two kids who can take care of themselves. I have two teenage boys and then an adult child who’s not even in the home anymore. I’m a giant asshole if I don’t honor that I’m able to do more than this other person.

So am I going to tell her she’s not hustling hard enough? Hell no, that makes me a dick. Don’t be a dick. What am I going to say, well, you just got to hustle? Inviting her to shoot herself in the foot before she even starts. Why should she even go after anything if she’s got two hours a day a couple of days a week that she can work on her business.

If we buy into hustle culture that is like, you’re probably not going to get there, you’re going to have to sacrifice something there. And I find it really interesting that a lot of programs that are scaling to multiple six figures require that you be a full-time coach. And mine doesn’t because I’m like, listen, the path just looks a little bit different.

I think hustle cultural also really relies that the first people who get there are better. And no, can you technically get there faster if you’re devoting 40 hours a week to your business than say five or 10? Yeah, probably. Maybe. Again, it depends on the energy, not necessarily the actions.

But even if everybody’s energy is equal, if somebody’s putting in four times the amount of hours per week than someone else, it stands to reason that that person is going to get there sooner than the other person. But that doesn’t diminish the work of the other person just because they don’t get there as quickly. They’re still on a train moving forward, they’re just going at a different pace. They’re two different paces, one’s not better than another.

I was going to say no one’s handing out awards, that’s actually not true. There are some coaching schools and some coaching communities that do hand out awards for like hitting these milestones. And that’s not necessarily anything negative, but you don’t have to make it anything negative that you didn’t get there in the same pace as someone else.

And hustle culture will really perpetuate the idea that the people who got there faster are somehow better. And this is really denying how much privilege some communities have that others don’t. If I look at this client in the face who’s working a full-time job, who’s a single parent with a child at home, and I push her and force her into a traditional hustle energy, I’m doing such a disservice to her. And I’m perpetuating the idea that faster is better, sooner is better. Again, hustle is an energy, not a set of actions.

I think hustle culture really overlooks the privilege of some communities over other communities. It does not take into account what somebody’s day to day life might look like. That doesn’t mean we use our day to day life as a reason why we can never achieve so we’re not willing to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and see what we’re capable of and try and fail.

But I think hustle culture perpetuates, well, I am at home working another job and I have these circumstances going on. So I can’t be successful because hustle culture is like sacrifice everything you have, sacrifice sleep, do whatever it takes because the person that gets there faster is the most important person in the room. And I call bullshit to all of it.

There’s so much privilege reeking throughout the hustle culture, that we really just need to point out that everybody’s circumstances are valid. And if we work instead my belief that it’s inevitable and it’s absolutely happening, no matter what, and I allow my life to be what my life is. I work with what I have.

The most important keys to your success have nothing to do with hustling and sacrificing, and everything to do with not giving up on yourself. Not needing the numbers to validate your existence, your value, and the inevitability that you’re going to create what you said you’re going to create. If that’s 100K or beyond doesn’t matter.

That you believe that that is possible for you and you’re not going to quit. And you’re going to keep going. And you’re going to get a group of people by your side who are going to see you through the end of that. And that if people get there faster or later than you do, no one’s better than anybody else. This persistent idea that there’s a limited number of trophies at the top is bullshit. There’s plenty of room. It’s a plateau, not a peak.

I also think hustle culture really goes against what I’ve been learning about Human Design. Now, a couple of weeks ago, it might have been last month, I had Kaia Hunter on, one of my clients from Path To 100K. She worked with me and one round of the Confident Coaches Mastermind, now she’s renewed into the next round of Path To 100K.

I am not a Human Design expert at all, she did give us a little bit of an insight to that in the podcast. She’s just hosted a class in Free To Paid Coach about Human Design. I’m going to bring some Human Design into Path To 100K because what we learned is we are all one of five kinds of energy that we operate in.

And the type that we are, the energy type that we are, like we’re born that way. This is imprinted on us almost three months before we are born, the kind of energy that we operate in.

This is not a Human Design episode but I thought it was important enough to say there’s five different types of energies. And if I just describe them a little bit, you can see which ones, this is where the people who are hustlers, who are going, “I don’t understand any of the words coming out of Amy’s mouth,” it’s probably because you would define yourself as one of these five energies. Whereas other people who are 100% on board with everything I would say would probably define themselves as a different one of these energies.

So you have a manifester. Manifesters, they’re initiators. They get an idea, they go out and they do it. They got lots of ideas, there’s lots of starting, they’re starting things all over the place. They’re starting five different businesses, get out of their way. They are a train that ain’t stopping at any stations to pick up anyone. They go.

Projectors are like directors of a play, they’re here to guide us. They see the big picture. But they’re also going to need a nap. They need lots of rest, they need lots of downtime. Hustle culture ain’t going to work for them, right? But they can still create beautiful businesses when they know how to work with that energy, rather than trying to force themselves into that kind of hustle, the faster the better.

Generators, that’s me by the way. I am a generator, we are the bulk of the population. We are sustainable energy. We’re the worker bees and we got to love what we work. So we’re the kind of consistent, we aren’t trains, we don’t shoot like a bullet train. If a manifester is a sprinter, then a generator is a marathoner. Which is funny because I would never run a marathon in my life.

But this is me, I don’t mind doing the long sustainable work, but I also really want to love the long sustainable work. So knowing what’s working and what’s not working for me is so important. Because while I’m willing to put in a long day’s work, I don’t want it to be something that’s sucking the soul out of me.

And you can already see the difference here, right? A manifester is like a freight train. Projectors are taking lots of rests. And generators are just this consistent energy, but we’ve also got to love what we’re doing. We got to love the actions.

And then you have manifesting generators, so those are like the combination of two of those. They’re a combination of manifesters and generators, they act very fast, they’re very loud, they get a lot done, but they also really want to love their work. They need that element to it. So they’re not starting quite so much, they’re probably going to stay with that thing just a little bit longer.

And then there’s the rarest of the rare, it’s only 1% of the population. They’re reflectors, and they reflect a community’s energy back at them. So if they’re around hustlers, they’re probably going to model that, If the vibe is more relaxed, they’re probably going to be more relaxed. If something’s not working, the reflector is going to show us that.

So just in that very short conversation about the five types, manifester, projector, manifesting generator, generator, and reflectors, you can see that some of those types might lend themselves more to a hustle vibe. And then some of them, particularly that projector, not at all. Like the exact opposite, right?

So again, not only do I not buy into hustle is required in order to create results, it might actually go against how you are designed and how you function. And if you try to force yourself into that hustle model it’s going to completely suck. And what’s worse, you’re going to think something’s wrong with you.

And I think that also gets me to even for those manifesters who are like bullet trains that don’t stop, they run with an idea, they go. Hustle lends to an air of anxiousness and force, and manifesters aren’t anxious and forceful. They’re not pushing square pegs into round holes. They have an idea and they implement, yes.

Manifesters are developing valuable marketable skills, they’re not just plowing through. There’s value and there’s something to the work that they’re doing. They’re not taking action for action’s sake, right. Hustle is an anxious don’t stop energy. And we may be okay with it in short bursts, but our bodies and our minds were not built for constant high alert.

A hustle energy has kind of a high alert, activated central nervous system energy to it. For a natural manifester, they can actually bullet train through but that doesn’t mean that their energy is that hustle energy, which is a high alert, activated nervous system energy.

It’s really interesting, I’m recording this podcast a day late because I live in the suburbs of St. Louis. I actually live in St. Peters, Missouri. We hit 13 inches of rain in 24 hours between late Monday night through end of day Tuesday. And Tuesday’s are the days I record my podcast. And I was on high alert the whole time. I’m fine. I’m totally fine, we have just a tiny little bit of wetness in the basement.

But I’m watching the news and I’m seeing like waves on Interstate 70 five minutes from my house. The flash flooding was so bad, cars submerged, friends in other parts of town talking about how their street is like an island, they can’t go anywhere. This part I hesitate to share but it’s already coming out, there’s an animal shelter here in St. Peters and none of the animals survived. All of the puppies in this animal shelter did not make it. They’re catastrophic.

And I was on high alert all day. I would have told you I wasn’t, I just was going, going, going all day. Checking the basement, we used all the towels in the house, hunted down a dehumidifier, eventually got a giant industrial fan. I did like three loads of, you know, I split up the towels, sop all these up, get them washed while I put the other load down and then rotate and rotate. I would have told you that if you were to just look at my actions, I was just going and going and going.

But the energy that I was feeling, that was a very anxious I got to get this done, got to get this taken care of or else energy. It was a high alert energy. And that, to me, is what hustle is. It’s on high alert because we’ve placed a value of some kind that the hustle is required to create the success.

And I realize tending to needs during a catastrophic weather event is not necessarily the same thing, but the emotion that I was feeling in my body, I was like, I have felt this before. This is the I’m not hitting the numbers my coach and I decided we needed to hit together or I was going to hit, and I’m feeling very anxious because what’s going to happen when I don’t hit those numbers? Where am I going to be on the leader board? And it would shift into that hustle have to get it done energy as opposed to the let’s just take the next step and the next step and the next step.

And it wasn’t until the end of the day when I realized the basement was back to being dry, crisis averted here at the house, and seeing the weather go down all across town that I realized, okay, everything’s going to be okay. I could feel my nervous system kind of like a power down. And this is what I want you to check in. This is how I know hustle is an energy, it’s a sensation. Where’s your nervous system?

Your action can be a lot of specific and purposeful actions. Just saying no to hustle culture is about checking in with the thoughts and feeling line. How are you feeling in your body? Are you decompressing? Are you giving your brain space to come up with the most creative ideas? Are you just plowing through and telling your kids, nope, you’re going to have to see mom in six months?

We can hustle or we can go with our flow. Yes, willingly push ourselves out of our comfort zones. I think the best way to do this is what can I do that makes me just a little bit pukey? If I feel just a little bit nauseous executing this, then I’m where I’m supposed to be.

Do some nervous system work. We’ve talked about it here on the podcast, we do a little bit of it in Free To Paid Coach, we’re doing a whole series on it in Path To 100K. Do you have your own back? This is one of the steps of Free To Paid Coach, this is step four.

Have your own back when you mess up. Stop beating the crap out of yourselves when things don’t go the way that you want them to. And then keep going. Find what’s working for you, what’s not working for you, find your flow. That’s what’s going to get you there.

We say no to hustle culture, we say yes to finding my flow and moving with that. And this is how we’re going to get paid. And this is how we’re going to make 100K. We’re going to do it unique to you and what works for you. Okay? Okay. Until next week, let’s get paid coach.

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